


Lighthouse Maintenance

by Tedronai



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 20:17:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tedronai/pseuds/Tedronai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's an accident at the lighthouse, and it brings about a moment of closeness between the brothers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lighthouse Maintenance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grassangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grassangel/gifts).



> I hope this is sufficient - I was trying for the "brotherly fluff" but discovered that fluff isn't my strongest area... Oops. Happy Yuletide! ^_^

We’d sort of settled in at Grimglass. You know, we’d got to know most of the neighbours by name at least, not that there were many of ‘em or any close, what with us living in the cottage next to the lighthouse and all, but anyway. We knew ‘em and they knew us, or as close as folks would come to know us around here, which meant to say that they knew we was from abroad and that Felix was a hocus. Or, Virtuer Harrowgate, as they called him. I guess you could say we were doing okay, all things considered.

It was a sunny day, that day, real nice and warm. I was doing lighthouse maintenance, Felix was in the cottage reading something or another. I’d just finished cleaning the mirrors, you know, the ones that reflect all the light and direct it out to the sea, and as I started down the stairs, I tripped. Now, those stairs could be real tricky but I’d learnt to climb them right. I’d had to. Or so I’d thought. But I must’ve placed Jashuki somehow on the edge of the step and of course it’d slip, what else should you expect? And rolling down them fucking stairs, all that went through my mind was, Kethe, if this fall don’t break my stupid neck I’m never climbing those stairs again. Which was all sorts of ridiculous, ‘cause of course I would, but that’s just the kind of thing you think about in a moment like that.

Well, just in case it needs to be said, I didn’t break my stupid neck. Hurt my ankle, though, and of course it had to be the other one, you know, the leg that actually works right. I didn’t think it was broken — small favours — but it sure didn’t take my weight when I tried to get up, head still spinning and Jashuki nowhere in sight. So I sat there at the foot of the stairs, too dazed to do nothing but cuss half under my breath, when Felix walked in.

“Mildmay, do you think—” He stopped dead when he saw me, he went white as a sheet and he had that panicked look that I think for a moment he thought I was dead or something. Then he seemed to figure out I must be alive ‘cause I was staring right back at him. And then he was helping me up and asking all sorts of questions and generally making a huge fuss. “…Are you alright? What happened?”

I tried to wave it off, but obviously it wasn’t none too convincing seeing as I couldn’t exactly walk without help. He helped me back to the cottage, and helped me get the shoe off. The ankle was swelling up nicely and I guess the rest of my body was catching up with the situation, too, ‘cause all of a sudden I was aching all over and all I could think of was, fuck, those were going to be some epic bruises. Felix hovered for a while, as if he didn’t quite know what to do, but then he said he was going to be right back and darted off to find a physician or a doctor or whatever they called themselves around here. I was left staring at the ceiling, tryin’ to not think about how much my ankle was hurting. I’m sure you can imagine how well that worked.

 

Felix returned soon enough with an old woman called Emma. She rubbed something on my ankle and bound it and told me not to try anything foolish for the next while. Then she gave me something for the pain and I didn’t really think it worked, it just made me sleepy, but I suppose sleeping was as good as just lying awake, and it sure beat the hell out of lying awake in pain.

 

It was dark when I woke up so it must’ve been the middle of the night. The ankle still hurt, and just about everything else hurt, too, and I was thirsty as well but I sure as hell wasn’t gonna shout for Felix to bring me water. That just wasn’t the sort of thing I do. But then I realised that it wasn’t all dark. The door was open and there was light from the next room, so either Felix was up or we were being robbed. I almost laughed at that thought as it popped into my head. The medicine must have still been fucking with my mind.

“Felix?” I called out, all quiet like, didn’t want to wake him up if he was sleeping after all.

And sure enough, I could hear his footsteps coming in. “Mildmay?” he said, in that breathless voice of his.

“Yeah, me,” I replied, feeling more than a bit silly because who the fuck else could I have been? But he didn’t seem to notice.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Like I’ve been ran over by a dozen horses,” I said, and it came out more mumbly than it should’ve but I think he got the general gist of it. “And thirsty.” That one articulated a bit better.

“Oh. Of course.” He vanished for a moment and returned then with a glass of water. He sat on the edge of the bed and handed me the glass, and I sat up enough to drink. I gave the glass back to him but instead of taking it away he just put it on the floor next to the bed. And sat there staring at me with a tiny little frown but it didn’t look like he actually saw me at all.

“Umm. Is something wrong?” I asked, and he seemed to snap out of it.

“No,” he said. Then he shook his head. “I mean yes, of course something is ‘wrong’, Mildmay, you’re hurt.”

I suppose he had a point. But it was the middle of the night and I kind of wanted to get back to sleep, or at least to try to sleep. But I couldn’t just tell him to leave me alone, not with him looking like a lost puppy like that. “Yeah, well, other’n that.”

He’d got a bit better about the whole communication thing, recently, but it still wasn’t exactly his strongest point, and probably was never gonna be. He looked away, like he couldn’t decide if it was worth the effort to try n’ have a conversation right now. “You could have died, falling down those stairs!” he eventually blurted out in a rush, and fuck me if it wasn’t the Lower City creeping through his flash accent and all. Kethe, he’d really gotten a scare!

And I just didn’t have the foggiest what to say to that. It wasn’t like I could deny it or anything, ‘cause he was right, I could have died. “Well, I didn’t,” I said after the silence had gone on a bit too long already.

“Yes… I know that!” he said, sounding all annoyed but not really at me. Maybe more like at the universe, for no other reason than because it could just randomly decide to kill either one of us and that was just a thing we both had to live with. Not saying it was a fun thing to realise for me neither, mind. “I know that,” he repeated, more softly. “But I just… Oh, Mildmay, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” And he sounded so lost and so scared that there wasn’t but one thing I could do.

“C’mere,” I said and took his hand, pulling him closer into a hug. He’d got better about that, too; once upon a time he’d used to hate being touched less’n it involved fucking, and that was something I’d made clear I wasn’t gonna do for him. But now he accepted the hug like it wasn’t no big deal, and after a while he hugged me back, almost like he wasn’t never going to let go, and once upon a time it might’ve been a different thing altogether but now there wasn’t nothing sexual about it and it was just… nice. It was normal, well, as if either of us knew the first thing about normal, but hey.

I’m not sure how long we sat there like that, but finally I had to say that I was getting tired and the position wasn’t all that comfortable in the long run neither and I wanted to get back to sleep. But it was so nice, being close to Felix, that I didn’t actually want to let him go, either. So I thought, what the hell, why not. “Umm. Would you like to sleep with me?” I asked.

He gave me a look that I could only describe as alarmed. “Would I… what?”

Powers and saints. I could’ve worded it a bit better, couldn’t I. Real brilliant, Milly-Fox. “No, I mean like actually sleep,” I said quickly. “Here. With me. Like… just sleep.”

“Oh.” Despite the darkness I could tell he was blushing furiously. “Of course you meant…” He trailed off, sounding more embarrassed than I could remember ever hearing him sound like. And I thought, great, I blew it, now that he’s thinking of the other thing he’s gonna be too embarrassed to stay. But then he said, in a small voice that barely sounded like Felix at all, “Okay.”

“Okay?” I repeated stupidly, thrown by the word choice as much as the answer.

“It means yes, I would very much like to stay here with you,” he said, the flash accent so clear that he must’ve been exaggerating it on purpose.

“Great,” I said. I settled back to sleep, and then I felt him lie down next to me. I hesitated only a bit before placing my arm around him. And he didn’t hesitate at all before he returned the gesture. It felt so right, falling asleep in each others’ arms, that I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why we weren’t sleeping like this every night. Maybe I should suggest we do that, was my last thought before sleep. It felt like coming home.


End file.
